German Atherosclerosis Society

The annual meeting of the DGAF 2018

This year’s exciting annual meeting was held under the exciting topic of “Atherosclerosis and Diabetes”. It comprised countless basic science and clinical topics presented and discussed by young scientists and well renown international experts throughout the three day meeting.

For this enduring and fruitful interaction we would like to thank all speakers and participants as well as our sponsors.

For the first time, the DGAF hosted a joined meeting with the chairs of the Egyptian Society for Vascular Biology and Atherosclerosis (EAVA) during the annual meeting. This, however, was not the first international cooperation of the DGAF and EAVA, because in November 2017 at the annual meeting of the Egyptian Society a joint session was held in Egypt at which DGAF was represented by Prof. Dr. Andreas Zirlik. At this year’s meeting the participants had the pleasure to listen to Prof. Dr. Ashraf Reda, President of EAVA, and Prof. Dr. Atef Elbahry, Vice-President, giving talks about “Residual Cardiovascular Risk – the scope of the problem“ (Ashraf Reda) and „Targeting Lipids – What we learn from FOURIER, IMPROVE-IT and ODYSSEY OUTCOMES?“ (Atef Elbahry).

Another eagerly awaited highlight in 2018 was the keynote lecture given by Prof. Dr. Klaus Ley from La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, California. Prof. Dr. Ley enlightened the participants with his talk on “Harnessing protective autoimmunity to curb atherosclerosis” and was a highly active participant in discussions during and after the scientific sessions. We would like to thank him for his outstanding contribution to the annual meeting.

The evening of the second meeting day is traditionally reserved for the award of the W.H.-Hauss-Prize for an outstanding scientific publication in the year before and the Rudolph-Schoenheimer-Medal for a life-long active commitment to Atherosclerosis Research.

After the W.H.-Hauss Prize session Prof. Dr. Winfried März gave his ceremonial address before being awarded with the Rudolph-Schoenheimer Medal. His thought-provoking but fascinating talk on the topic of “The beer that has not been drunk failed its purpose – What are the barriers to translational medicine?” marked the end of the evening session.

Thanks to the very good weather conditions this year’s poster session could be transferred to outside of the venue. All participants and poster presenters could enjoy the sunny weather and at the same time share their scientific result with their colleagues. The jury had plenty of time to discuss all posters and the results. We congratulate both winning posters once again:

The annual meeting of the German Atherosclerosis Society lives from a close interaction between clinic and basis science research, from young scientists and well renowned scientists. We are proud to enhance this interaction and were able to deepen it in 2018 even further. We are looking forward to another fruitful annual meeting in 2019 and hope to welcome you there.